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Camp
"The Camp" centres on a couple, who, though living through one of the longest & hottest summers on record believe themselves to be stuck in a house, in a snow-storm, that like the summer, is never going to end. They have no food and can't stay where they are through fear they will be killed by marauding looters. Meanwhile, outside, families play on, unaware of the struggle going on behind closed doors. They attempt an escape....an escape that leads to horror. What is it that happening to some of the "campers", and what is the connection between the camp and a secret government department?
- GenresHorror
288 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1989
6 people are currently reading
97 people want to read
About the author
Guy N. Smith
175 books298 followersI was born on November 21, 1939, in the small village of Hopwas, near Tamworth, Staffordshire, England. My mother was a pre-war historical novelist (E. M. Weale) and she always encouraged me to write.
I was first published at the age of 12 in The Tettenhall Observer, a local weekly newspaper. Between 1952-57 I wrote 56 stories for them, many serialized. In 1990 I collated these into a book entitled Fifty Tales from the Fifties.
My father was a dedicated bank manager and I was destined for banking from birth. I accepted it but never found it very interesting. During the early years when I was working in Birmingham, I spent most of my lunch hours in the Birmingham gun quarter. I would have loved to have served an apprenticeship in the gun trade but my father would not hear of it.
Shooting (hunting) was my first love, and all my spare time was spent in this way. In 1961 I designed and made a 12-bore shotgun, intending to follow it up with six more, but I did not have the money to do this. I still use the Guy N. Smith short-barrelled magnum. During 1960-67 I operated a small shotgun cartridge loading business but this finished when my components suppliers closed down and I could no longer obtain components at competitive prices.
My writing in those days only concerned shooting. I wrote regularly for most of the sporting magazines, interspersed with fiction for such magazines as the legendary London Mystery Selection, a quarterly anthology for which I contributed 18 stories between 1972-82.
In 1972 I launched my second hand bookselling business which eventually became Black Hill Books. Originally my intention was to concentrate on this and maybe build it up to a full-time business which would enable me to leave banking. Although we still have this business, writing came along and this proved to be the vehicle which gave me my freedom.
I wrote a horror novel for the New English Library in 1974 entitled Werewolf by Moonlight. This was followed by a couple more, but it was Night of the Crabs in 1976 which really launched me as a writer. It was a bestseller, spawning five sequels, and was followed by another 60 or so horror novels through to the mid-1990's. Amicus bought the film rights to Crabs in 1976 and this gave me the chance to leave banking and by my own place, including my shoot, on the Black Hill.
The Guy N. Smith Fan Club was formed in 1990 and still has an active membership. We hold a convention every year at my home which is always well attended.
Around this time I became Poland's best-selling author. Phantom Press published two GNS books each month, mostly with print runs of around 100,000.
I have written much, much more than just horror; crime and mystery (as Gavin Newman), and children's animal novels (as Jonathan Guy). I have written a dozen or so shooting and countryside books, a book on Writing Horror Fiction (A. & C. Black). In 1997 my first full length western novel, The Pony Riders was published by Pinnacle in the States.
With 100-plus books to my credit, I was looking for new challenges. In 1999 I formed my own publishing company and began to publish my own books. They did rather well and gave me a lot of satisfaction. We plan to publish one or two every year.
Still regretting that I had not served an apprenticeship in the gun trade, the best job of my life dropped into my lap in 1999 when I was offered the post of Gun Editor of The Countryman's Weekly, a weekly magazine which covers all field sports. This entails my writing five illustrated feature articles a week on guns, cartridges, deer stalking, big game hunting etc.
Alongside this we have expanded our mail order second hand crime fiction business, still publish a few books, and I find as much time as possible for shooting.
Jean, my wife, helps with the business. Our four children, Rowan, Tara, Gavin and Angus have all moved away from home but they visit on a regular basis.
I would not want to live anywhere other than m
I was first published at the age of 12 in The Tettenhall Observer, a local weekly newspaper. Between 1952-57 I wrote 56 stories for them, many serialized. In 1990 I collated these into a book entitled Fifty Tales from the Fifties.
My father was a dedicated bank manager and I was destined for banking from birth. I accepted it but never found it very interesting. During the early years when I was working in Birmingham, I spent most of my lunch hours in the Birmingham gun quarter. I would have loved to have served an apprenticeship in the gun trade but my father would not hear of it.
Shooting (hunting) was my first love, and all my spare time was spent in this way. In 1961 I designed and made a 12-bore shotgun, intending to follow it up with six more, but I did not have the money to do this. I still use the Guy N. Smith short-barrelled magnum. During 1960-67 I operated a small shotgun cartridge loading business but this finished when my components suppliers closed down and I could no longer obtain components at competitive prices.
My writing in those days only concerned shooting. I wrote regularly for most of the sporting magazines, interspersed with fiction for such magazines as the legendary London Mystery Selection, a quarterly anthology for which I contributed 18 stories between 1972-82.
In 1972 I launched my second hand bookselling business which eventually became Black Hill Books. Originally my intention was to concentrate on this and maybe build it up to a full-time business which would enable me to leave banking. Although we still have this business, writing came along and this proved to be the vehicle which gave me my freedom.
I wrote a horror novel for the New English Library in 1974 entitled Werewolf by Moonlight. This was followed by a couple more, but it was Night of the Crabs in 1976 which really launched me as a writer. It was a bestseller, spawning five sequels, and was followed by another 60 or so horror novels through to the mid-1990's. Amicus bought the film rights to Crabs in 1976 and this gave me the chance to leave banking and by my own place, including my shoot, on the Black Hill.
The Guy N. Smith Fan Club was formed in 1990 and still has an active membership. We hold a convention every year at my home which is always well attended.
Around this time I became Poland's best-selling author. Phantom Press published two GNS books each month, mostly with print runs of around 100,000.
I have written much, much more than just horror; crime and mystery (as Gavin Newman), and children's animal novels (as Jonathan Guy). I have written a dozen or so shooting and countryside books, a book on Writing Horror Fiction (A. & C. Black). In 1997 my first full length western novel, The Pony Riders was published by Pinnacle in the States.
With 100-plus books to my credit, I was looking for new challenges. In 1999 I formed my own publishing company and began to publish my own books. They did rather well and gave me a lot of satisfaction. We plan to publish one or two every year.
Still regretting that I had not served an apprenticeship in the gun trade, the best job of my life dropped into my lap in 1999 when I was offered the post of Gun Editor of The Countryman's Weekly, a weekly magazine which covers all field sports. This entails my writing five illustrated feature articles a week on guns, cartridges, deer stalking, big game hunting etc.
Alongside this we have expanded our mail order second hand crime fiction business, still publish a few books, and I find as much time as possible for shooting.
Jean, my wife, helps with the business. Our four children, Rowan, Tara, Gavin and Angus have all moved away from home but they visit on a regular basis.
I would not want to live anywhere other than m
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 29, 2014
The Camp refers to an all inclusive vacation resort on the coast of England, which is upsetting enough. For some reason both the resort's management and the British government think that's the best place to test dangerous psychedelics on random vacationers.
The petty, dull holiday makers have complex delusions, such as a new ice age or illegal pregnancies. There are some complications, so to keep things quiet a government assassin very nosily starts murdering the subjects and everyone around them.
Pretty tame stuff for Smith next to giant crabs and onanistic mystics, but that's what happens the further into the 80s we go.
Not much going on, and what there is doesn't make a ton of sense.
More reviews at Trash Menace.
The petty, dull holiday makers have complex delusions, such as a new ice age or illegal pregnancies. There are some complications, so to keep things quiet a government assassin very nosily starts murdering the subjects and everyone around them.
Pretty tame stuff for Smith next to giant crabs and onanistic mystics, but that's what happens the further into the 80s we go.
Not much going on, and what there is doesn't make a ton of sense.
More reviews at Trash Menace.
February 12, 2017
This book was entertaining but it could have been so much more. There were some good ideas but nothing was really explored and it kind of just ended.
March 3, 2019
3.5 the book gets and extra half star for Guy's b-grade drive inn style horror. It also looses half that star for muddling up the middle of this. Also for ending this thing abruptly as a head on collision.
It seems, for undetermined reasons, that the government of Britain is letting a scientist test his C-551 drug on holidaymakers at Paradise Holiday Camp. C-551 is sort of like a hallucinogen. It brings out the subjects inner thoughts, fears. They don't test the whole camp, just a certain few. So it's kind of like an episode of Fantasy Island. But not as fun for the subjects.
One couple think a new ice age is upon us. Another couple has the husband an uncaring git who is always on the make for money. Scamming the Inland Revenue service. His wife is an uptight ice queen who thinks she somehow becomes pregnant. They have a daughter who goes off with another subject, a hippie type who smokes his cannabis. That counter acts the C-551 and he kills the girl. There are two guys who come to the conclusion that they are guinea pigs and want out. The head of the testing brings in a problem solver to take out the subjects. All the subjects. There is also an anarchist who tries to rile up an uprising in the camp. He too is being tested. He enlists a gang of skinheads as his army. This sub plot is quite the laugh.
Reading a Guy N. Smith book is always fun, even when it's not very good. They just have that, like I said earlier, b or z-grade movie feel. Like coming away from a midnight movie that has you wondering why I missed it the first time around.
It seems, for undetermined reasons, that the government of Britain is letting a scientist test his C-551 drug on holidaymakers at Paradise Holiday Camp. C-551 is sort of like a hallucinogen. It brings out the subjects inner thoughts, fears. They don't test the whole camp, just a certain few. So it's kind of like an episode of Fantasy Island. But not as fun for the subjects.
One couple think a new ice age is upon us. Another couple has the husband an uncaring git who is always on the make for money. Scamming the Inland Revenue service. His wife is an uptight ice queen who thinks she somehow becomes pregnant. They have a daughter who goes off with another subject, a hippie type who smokes his cannabis. That counter acts the C-551 and he kills the girl. There are two guys who come to the conclusion that they are guinea pigs and want out. The head of the testing brings in a problem solver to take out the subjects. All the subjects. There is also an anarchist who tries to rile up an uprising in the camp. He too is being tested. He enlists a gang of skinheads as his army. This sub plot is quite the laugh.
Reading a Guy N. Smith book is always fun, even when it's not very good. They just have that, like I said earlier, b or z-grade movie feel. Like coming away from a midnight movie that has you wondering why I missed it the first time around.
March 5, 2023
There was a period during the 1970s when I was a kid, where there seemed to be an entire genre of "some kind of accident turns harmless animals evil" horror fiction: James Herbert's Rats, Guy N Smith's Crabs, Nick Sharman's Cats, Richard Curtis's Squirm --and I devoured them all. I even remember one called "Night of the Lepus", where mutant bunny rabbits filled the killer animal role. Although surely that one was a joke?
Anyway, The Camp is an offering from Guy N Smith, author of the Crabs series. I'll not rehash the plot here. It's well-covered elsewhere in this 'ere boutique. But suffice to say that, while the mutant animals are missing, all the other pre-requisites for a good ol' 1970s pulp horror yarn are here:
* Hero called "Jeff" --the hero is always called Jeff or Geoff. It's the archetypal 1970s hunk name.
* Excrucitingly naff description of minor drug use. One of the baddies is a cannabis "addict" who proclaims that he "needs a fix". He buys his "fix" from another one-dimensional sleazy "pusher" who treats his customers with contempt because "cannabis addicts" will put up wth anything when they're desperate for a "fix".
* Embarrasingly bad sex scene around Chapter 2. Actually this was more of a James Herbert trademark. But Guy N Smith has a go. Hunky Jeff apparently "makes love" all night long [and this was pre- wee blue pills, remember!] to the female camp employee who falls in love with him, within ten minutes of meeting him.
* ...and who can blame her because; getting ready to go out on a date with her, hunky Jeff [who it should be pointed out is in his 20s], with his longish hair and beard neatly trimmed that day, dons "slacks" a light blue shirt and a cravat. Yes folks, our heart-throb hero is apparently the bastard love child of Noel Edmonds and Noël Coward.
[By the way, WTF are slacks? I've read people wearing them in American books and cringed at the word. But not come across it in an English book before. When I was a kid in the 70s, my mum used to refer to her belt-loop & pockets lacking hideous polyester trousers as "slacks". Thus I always assumed that men wore trousers and women wore slacks. So, whenever [as above] I read about a man donning "slacks" I can't shake the image of him pulling on a pair of garish 70s ladies polyester trousers.]
Anyway, enough of this jiggery-pokery. The Camp is a fun read. But the intervening decades have removed whatever horror elements it may once have contained. Reading it now is a bit like trying to concentrate on the plot of a 1970s TV programme or film, but being sidetracked by the width of the lapels and trouser bottoms, or the horrific wallpaper patterns.
Anyway, The Camp is an offering from Guy N Smith, author of the Crabs series. I'll not rehash the plot here. It's well-covered elsewhere in this 'ere boutique. But suffice to say that, while the mutant animals are missing, all the other pre-requisites for a good ol' 1970s pulp horror yarn are here:
* Hero called "Jeff" --the hero is always called Jeff or Geoff. It's the archetypal 1970s hunk name.
* Excrucitingly naff description of minor drug use. One of the baddies is a cannabis "addict" who proclaims that he "needs a fix". He buys his "fix" from another one-dimensional sleazy "pusher" who treats his customers with contempt because "cannabis addicts" will put up wth anything when they're desperate for a "fix".
* Embarrasingly bad sex scene around Chapter 2. Actually this was more of a James Herbert trademark. But Guy N Smith has a go. Hunky Jeff apparently "makes love" all night long [and this was pre- wee blue pills, remember!] to the female camp employee who falls in love with him, within ten minutes of meeting him.
* ...and who can blame her because; getting ready to go out on a date with her, hunky Jeff [who it should be pointed out is in his 20s], with his longish hair and beard neatly trimmed that day, dons "slacks" a light blue shirt and a cravat. Yes folks, our heart-throb hero is apparently the bastard love child of Noel Edmonds and Noël Coward.
[By the way, WTF are slacks? I've read people wearing them in American books and cringed at the word. But not come across it in an English book before. When I was a kid in the 70s, my mum used to refer to her belt-loop & pockets lacking hideous polyester trousers as "slacks". Thus I always assumed that men wore trousers and women wore slacks. So, whenever [as above] I read about a man donning "slacks" I can't shake the image of him pulling on a pair of garish 70s ladies polyester trousers.]
Anyway, enough of this jiggery-pokery. The Camp is a fun read. But the intervening decades have removed whatever horror elements it may once have contained. Reading it now is a bit like trying to concentrate on the plot of a 1970s TV programme or film, but being sidetracked by the width of the lapels and trouser bottoms, or the horrific wallpaper patterns.
January 29, 2021
Unsuspecting holiday-goers are going to get experimented on and have fantasies, some are going to have violent nightmares. Governments doing nasty things to innocent people and then cover up all the mistakes. Not alot of gore, not really pulpy enough for guy.
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August 7, 2019Recording the fact that I read this book most likely either in the late 1970s or early 1980s
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews